Euro Interview (guitar Mag) by Metallica
Here's an interview with James & Jason from a guitar mag which i don't
think is available in the US... could be wrong though... well anyways
it's new and it'll save you having to buy or read it at the stores
etc.... I've chopped off a chunk of the intro to the interview as it
really said nothing new.
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..............Of course, Metallica arrived just when the rock
landscape was shifting. Grunge was going overground, and the
Lollapalooza festival sometime showcase for most of the US's current
big guns, be they Pearl Jam, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Smashing
Pumpkins and The Beastie Boys became America's new church of guitar
noise. Thus, when Load tipped a hat to the the new alt States rock
regime, came the accusations of compromise and sell out.
Yet, as anyone who witnessed any of Metallica's summer stadium gigs -
raging Reading performance included will testify, there's little
evidence the band have exactly gone soft. They're certainly not thrash
metal anymore, but they always vetoed that tag anyway 'Thrash metal
implies a lack of arrangement, lack of ability, lack of songwriting,
lack of any form of intelligence,' grumped drummer Lars Ulrich as
early as 1984. Late '90s Metallica will inevitably get a pasting from
some quarters for being as much pop as metal, but as the outspoken
Ulrich observed more recently; 'What does pop mean? Popular. Well,
we're pretty fucking popular, in case you haven't noticed.'
Ordering bottles of Corona beer, Hetfield and Newsted are in good mood
as they prepare to talk; yes, their locks remains short, but
Hetfield's jeans and t shirt are reassuringly black; oh, and their
guitars remain resolutely loud.
TGM: You've been called thrash metal, heavy metal how do you feel
about these labels? Does metal still exist?
James Hetfield: Hey, you forgot a few others - alternative, speed,
grunge... labels, I think, kind of box you in so I don't really think
about them. We're Metallica - look us up under Metallica in the record
store.
Jason Newsted: Yes, metal still exists - it's alive and well in
northern California! The labels? People always put labels on stuff.
Maybe early on we were called thrash metal, which was mixing fast
music, a blend of punk and who knows what, but nowadays I like to call
it heavy music. Metallica are more than just metal because we cover
more ground than that now we can play as fast any anybody else but we
can also p!ay with control. We can also be nice and listenable, so
we're more than just thrash metal, more than metal itself
TGM: So who do you regard as your peers now?
Jason Newsted: I used to be able to say Soundgarden very easily, but
since they've broken up... you know, they were the main songwriters
doing good for years and years, but nowadays there aren't really peers
as far as heavy music and metal goes for Metallica. There are peers in
other ilks of music. I would consider maybe U2 and possibly... no, I
wouldn't go so far as to say Sting, but people might say so as far as
the realm of our popularity goes. It's hard to say. In our music, I
don't really think there are any peers anymore.
TGM: Lars Ulrich has described Reload, obviously tongue-in-cheek, as
sounding like The Spice Girls. What's your take on that comment... is
he hinting at a serious point about how people perceive you?
James Hetfield: We don't sound like the Spice Girls: we might look
like them in our photos, and Kirk's wardrobe is very .. vast, ha ha!
Y'know, this record sounds pretty much like Metallica to me. I think
there's a little more of extreme songs on Re-Load because we wrote 30
songs for Load and we expected to finish them all... but then we
started on the easier, quicker songs. Some of the ones that didn't get
finished were the more extreme kind; longer, slower, heavier, faster,
more stripped down, more kind of folksy. So there's a lot more
extremes on Re-Load.
TGM: You've survived grunge and post-grunge, which makes you the only
big '80s metal band that hasn't fallen into obscurity how do you
explain your longevity?
Jason Newsted: We're able to keep coming up with ideas. The gift we
have is a couple of really good songwriters in our band who keep
coming up with good songs that people like all over the place. Lyrics
that people can empathise with and embrace and make them feel; hey
he's singing about me, that's my song! We're still able to do that. I
think the other reason is that we work really hard. We take music to
the people and have done so for years and years, going to every place
in the world where they'll have us. That kind of thing is a strong
factor.
TGM: You recorded much of Re-Load at the same time as Load:
how difficult was it to re-work tracks recorded that long ago?
Jason Newsted: Well, the drums were recorded on the Load session, but
that was all. For these last three months we've been finishing the
guitars, the bass and the vocals, so it was a cool thing that the leg
work was, done before. We didn't have to clo 100 takes of this song,
110 takes of that song and so forth. We came in already having the
songs rehearsed, so we just had to piece the puzzle together. It was a
very abstract way of making an album because the drums are already
done and the beat just comes to you. It's very different from the way
we've made albums before, and very different from the way most people
make albums.
TGM: Are you as emotionally involved in Metallica as when you started?
James Hetfield: Y'know , emotionally, l'm probably more involved than
ever because I think between the 'Black' record and Load we gotta lot
of time to ourselves. Lars and I had been heads down, focussed on
Metallica for 15 years, and we got some time away from each other and
we experienced life outside of Metallica... if there is such a thing,
heheh! Now, when we got back together we found that we'd matured and
brought a lot of individual confidence into this band. When you get
the four of us together now, it's a lot stronger than it ever was.
TGM: You experienced a bit of a backlash with Load; did you take it
seriously?
James Hetfield: No... backlash? Don't believe it. Actually, we
laughed quite a bit about it. I was a little disappointed about some
of the reactions to Load - there were a lot of fashion critics out
there instead of music critics, hahah! I think Load had a cool feel
lyrically. It was a kind of exploration that we did on the record and
there was a lot of coolness that we were very proud of, but it got
overshadowed by Lars' fuzzy jacket and Kirk's painted toenails. It's
too bad..
Jason Newsted: We experienced a backlash, but it's important for us to
keep on pushing the envelope, to retain the heaviness that we know. We
know metal the best and that's our forte we try to stay within that,
but if we can expand it in any way, it's up to us to take those steps.
We've been together a long, long time and you can't go around pleasing
everybody all the time who would wanL to? If it were that easy then
everybody would be doing this worrying what the 15 year old who lives
down the street thinks... you can't think that way There's always
going to be people who'll want you to stay the same because they're
staying the same, they're possibly afraid to confront themselves. And
there's always new generations coming up, so us moving on is just
something we have to do to keep us strong, to keep it alive.
TGM: Your standing among metal bands in the '80s and '90s is pretty
much unchallenged, but what about your wider influences? There's a
Finnish classical quartet who've recorded an LP of Meta11ica songs...
Jason Newsted: Yeah, Apocalyptica are four cellists who play
Metallica, and Sepultura too. Their album of our covers was really
cool and they opened for us in their hometown. To hear that
interpretation of our music especially the mellower songs like The
Unforgiven, the way that it's actually a wonderful composition and it
pieces together well it's really cool to hear that kind of thing.
TGM: Are you soaking up a much wider variety of music now than before?
Jason Newsted: l'm listening to a lot of different music right now, a
lot of hip hop I like the Mackavelli record that Tupac put out before
he died but I also like Wes Montgomery very much. I like a lot of
Brazilian music:, a lot of bossa nova, that kind of thing, plus Bob
Marley, Tom Waits, Sepultura. I also like ambient music: anything and
everything except for new, polished country music.
James Hetfield: For me there's Rocket From the Crypt, a San Diego
greaser rock/punk band with horns. They're really aggressive, they
remind me a little bit of early stuff by The Misfits. l've also been
listening to Marianne Faithfull's 20th Centrury Blues album. She's
singing a little bit on Reload, on a track called Memory Remains it
kinda deals with the movie Sunset Boulevard, that kind of lost movie
star deal. Bob Rock suggested her. I wasn't that familiar with her
stuff but I listened to this 20th Century Blues album and, boy, you
smell the cigarettes on her voice and the CD is awesome. Such
character. We convinced her to lay down some la la las. Us and her. an
unusual combination? Ha ha! Well, not really.
TGM: But isn't it that sort of thing, allied to your image change,
that causes some fans to think you're now trying to turn your back on
what made Metallica big?
Jason Newsted: lmage-wise, I think it was just the Load photos
throwing people for a loop. It'd been a long time between albums and
people had got pictures of us on their wall from 1990, with long hair,
tight jeans and t-shirts. Then five or six years later we've got Cuban
pimp suits on, we're smoking cigars, sipping Martinis and all the hair
is cut. People were like; wait a minute man, that's not my band! What
happened!?
What people didn't know was it was the first time we' d done this type
of thing, had a stylist to create a mood in a photograph. Everybody
thinks that they're going to see Metallica walking down the street in
Cuban pimp suits now, but it was just a photograph we're the same
guys, y'know? I can see why people thought that way, but we don't want
people to disrespect the guys that started out this music. A lot of
bands that the kids like now are bands that go much faster and all
that stuff, but they were influenced by James and Kirk; they wouldn't
be playing guitar if it wasn't for them. We broke down a lot of walls
and doors for the new bands to get where they are now, so show some
respect - that's all I'm saying.
TGM: 'The Black Album' sold 15 million copies worldwide; is it a
constant pressure to try and repeat that success?
James Hetfield: Repeating it is impossible, and trying to repeat it...
chasing that goal is useless. We're very content with what it did and
how ithappened the right time, the right place, all that stuff. We're
more interested in moving on now and just being different from it. You
can't reproduce the same thing. There's a lot of bands who kill
themselves trying to do it and they go nowhere. They really go
nowhere. Y'know, we still do play a lot of older material. Actually
we're now playing a lot from Kill 'Em All which is a lot of fun,
adding new life to the old songs. It's fun to see what happens playing
songs you haven't played in a while and from all the records, we're
playing a little bit of everything. It's the same old kicking ass
live.
TGM: What would you never do again?
Jason Newsted: Probably have a mohawk!
TGM: What's the funniest rumour that you've heard about yourself?
Jason Newsted: That I'm a homosexual.
James Hetfield: That we're musicians.... No, probably that I was
hooked on heroin. The internet has a lot of huge ugly rumours out I
there. I think probably the most disturbing one was that we've broken
up because of some reason... Kirk is hooked on heroin or someone has
gone off to become a hunting guy or some shit like that. But this
band, well, you can't get rid of us that soon!'
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